It's a game in which you build and pilot a rocket into space. Currently in pre-release and is a lot of fun.

Play right now is fairly limited to orbits and going forever, but devs are going to add more things like docking missions and other planetoids soon.

Spoilered are a few shots of my first successful orbit. I say successful, but I had actually burned most of my fuel by the time I managed to get a stable orbit going. The little bit I had left was nowhere near enough to bring me back so I ended it there.

This seems to be the sort of game where mods will keep it alive and here are a few really good ones: http://mod.gib.me/kerbal/mods/ (sunday punch is a good pack and the tricoupler_redo is a texture fix that will be included in the 0.8.5 release

Nice find, this looks like a really promising game. I haven't gotten close to an orbit yet, but I did get to space after about an hour of explosions/uncontrollable spins/clipping the launch pad on liftoff

also is the bug where the names will start to creep off the screen going to be fixed in the next update? It's not really game-breaking, but it's a bit annoying for longer flights. (Last screenshot in OP shows it starting to happen)

Yeah, I wasted a good Saturday on this. Still haven't got into orbit yet, but have been able to get up to 150000 m. The key I found was to make everything symmetric and avoid radial couplers and wings. Wings seem to just make everything unbalanced and not provide any stability.

But yeah, great gem of a game. Will definitely be paying for a full version.

I apologize, 90% of the time I write on the Fora I am intoxicated.

Yakk wrote:The question the thought experiment I posted is aimed at answering: When falling in a black hole, do you see the entire universe's future history train-car into your ass, or not?

Dark567 wrote:Yeah, I wasted a good Saturday on this. Still haven't got into orbit yet, but have been able to get up to 150000 m. The key I found was to make everything symmetric and avoid radial couplers and wings. Wings seem to just make everything unbalanced and not provide any stability.

But yeah, great gem of a game. Will definitely be paying for a full version.

If you're getting to 150km, you probably have the delta-V for orbit, you just need to go sideways faster. The atmosphere seems to end pretty abruptly somewhere between 35km and 40km, so as long as you are above that it's just a matter of horizontal speed.

"Optimism, pessimism, fuck that; we're going to make it happen. As God is my bloody witness, I'm hell-bent on making it work." -Elon Musk

2 central fuel tanks with a liquid jet at the bottom4 radial decouplers with solid boosters attached1 fuel tank on top of each solid booster.

Having just typed that out, my capsule is now starting to fall back down to the planet. I'd best get ready to deploy the chutes.

This is totally my design too. But I installed the Sunday Punch mod from the OP, so I instead have 8 radial decouplers with the larger solid boosters, and no extra fuel tanks. My logic was basically "hey, the shuttle seems to work..".I'll be honest, I have no idea if there are like proper "successful flight" conditions, so I've just been trying to get as high/fast as possible, before ending the flight when I get bored.

Edit: Also, since you seem to come here too HarvesteR, did this investigation get anywhere? I only ask because the sound in-game is monstrously loud compared to the other sounds coming out of my PC, and I'd appreciate at least a "mute" switch so I can watch something in the background whilst playing the game.

Edit 2.1: I notice there's a new version out, it could be in there.. unfortunately, the site seems to be.. being difficult for me. Arses.

I still can't quite get into orbit. I always end up landing on the other side of the planet. Is there an easy way to do it? Should I fly straight up until I'm above the atmosphere, then go sideways? Or should I fly at 45 degrees, then turn? Or some other angle?

Also, ideally, I want some fuel left over when I'm in orbit so my astronauts aren't stuck in orbit forever.

AFAIK, there aren't, yet, but it's easy to come up with a list of self imposed goals:

Altitude markers (100km, 500km, 1000km)

Orbit (points for altitude and low eccentricity)

Orbit and successful return

Escape gravity altogether

Launch to 5km, land safely, and relaunch to orbit

Etc, etc, etc

SlyReaper: I usually go straight up at ~100/ms to 10km, then go to about 60° or 70° and accelerate up to somewhat over 300m/s at a bit past 30km, before turning to more like 20° or 30° and getting up to orbital speed. Trying to rush through the lower atmosphere much faster seems to be a good way to waste fuel.

"Optimism, pessimism, fuck that; we're going to make it happen. As God is my bloody witness, I'm hell-bent on making it work." -Elon Musk

Izawwlgood wrote:Just a suggestion, that may or may not be agreed with, but I'd like to see some kind of guide to shoot for, like something that calculates required velocity/altitude to maintain orbit or such.

Well I achieved both escape velocity and a decent orbit. Not sure what to do with it now.

Spoiler:

The Kerman's are pretty much locked in those mental states.

I think I'd prefer it if escape velocity wasn't possible with the default parts, and getting higher altitudes and such would unlock new parts (more funding for accomplishments). Maybe unlock some antimatter engines or something to kill our little astronauts with g forces.

Check out this section of the KSP forums for more mods. There's also a newer version of the Sunday Punch mod that was in the OP's link. Speaking of the mods in that link, has anyone gotten the communications satellite to work? The description says in need to be in geosynchronous orbit, but all I've managed to do is jettison it around 50km up. I haven't even gotten into a proper orbit yet, much less a geosynchronus one, but I would think that all it really needs is to be floating around nice and high up. come to think of it, I don't even know how to tell if it's working or not since I don't know what it does.

What would be super nice to have is something to aim at, like landing sites around the planet, or a moon to explore, or a space station, or all those things. One of the mods I downloaded has a bomb in it so something to use it on would be cool as well.

SlyReaper wrote:I just broke 250km and still rising.

My ship:

Spoiler:

2 central fuel tanks with a liquid jet at the bottom4 radial decouplers with solid boosters attached1 fuel tank on top of each solid booster.

Having just typed that out, my capsule is now starting to fall back down to the planet. I'd best get ready to deploy the chutes.

Why did you put fuel tanks on top of the solid boosters? They only power the engines.

psion wrote:Well I achieved both escape velocity and a decent orbit. Not sure what to do with it now.

Levi wrote:Speaking of the mods in that link, has anyone gotten the communications satellite to work? The description says in need to be in geosynchronous orbit, but all I've managed to do is jettison it around 50km up. I haven't even gotten into a proper orbit yet, much less a geosynchronus one, but I would think that all it really needs is to be floating around nice and high up. come to think of it, I don't even know how to tell if it's working or not since I don't know what it does.

It's not possible to do a geosynchronous orbit. The planet doesn't rotate.

SlyReaper wrote:I still can't quite get into orbit. I always end up landing on the other side of the planet. Is there an easy way to do it? Should I fly straight up until I'm above the atmosphere, then go sideways? Or should I fly at 45 degrees, then turn? Or some other angle?

Also, ideally, I want some fuel left over when I'm in orbit so my astronauts aren't stuck in orbit forever.

I haven't actually grabbed this game yet, doing so now, but I know you can't get into orbit from a single impulse from any point, your orbit will always intersect your starting point, if you don't reach escape velocity. Although a continuous burn isn't a single impulse, some of the same still holds true, that your orbit should end up intersecting the point you were at when your engines turned off. So you do need to have some burn when you're in orbit to end up with an orbit that doesn't intersect the planet or the atmosphere.

And remember that they key is having enough sideways velocity so that when you're falling towards the planet, that you'll miss it on the way down. If there weren't any atmosphere, then the fastest way to that would just be to start off going directly sideways to the ground. Since there is atmosphere, you probably want to get above that, and then get a ton of velocity perpendicular to the ground.

http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/ might be helpful as well, especially the beginning parts, there's a topic list in the upper right. Probably will also be more useful once other objects to travel to get included.

Have you used the symmetry button in the upper left? Its round with a dot in it. It makes construction a lot easier.

I have, but it's mainly the getting parts to lock together the way I want. Also, having them be level. But I was talking about getting fuel tanks to go radial so that I could have them be something other than the main body.

Heh, I didn't even notice that fuel tanks only work with liquid rockets. They're just unnecessary weight as they are. Might as well plonk some more solid boosters there as an intermediate stage after the first solid boosters have been jettisoned.

Speaking of weight, I can't see anywhere in component descriptions how heavy the different components are. It seems like that would be a fairly important thing to know when building a rocket. I've had setups where I press launch, and the rocket just sits there because the engines aren't powerful enough to even lift it.

Also, does anyone bother with that SAS module? I've been fitting one, but I don't use it that much. Would I save much weight if I took it off?

I was able to successfully get into an circular (well, elliptical) orbit, followed by a (somewhat) successful de-orbit. I ended up going quite a bit higher than I had intended. Went around about a whole orbit around the planet, Apogee at 325.063km, 1928.6 m/s, Perigee at 278.665 km, 2030.5 m/s.

That chart that Dark567 posted is really useful.

I had a rather large rocket. It has 9 solid fuel rockets, all attached around a core of 3 liquid fuel rockets, each with 2 fuel tanks on top of them, and attached to a 3-way split with an SAS on top of it. On top of that, is another single fuel rocket with another pair of fuel tanks on top of it. During launch, I have it set up so the solid and liquid fuel rockets all fire at the same time. I head (mostly) straight up, and that mostly is largely because with only one SAS it isn't particularly stable, but it's enough to keep it pointed in largely the right direction. When the solid rockets run out of fuel, they're jettisoned, and then when the 3 main liquid rockets run out of fuel, they, and their fuel tanks, and the splitter, and the SAS are all jettisoned, and the final stage with it's liquid rocket and 2 fuel tanks gets fired up. I aimed at a bit of an angle up to the horizon, and fired that one until about 1 of it's fuel tanks was used up, and then cut the engine. Then I waited, and kept going up, until my vertical speed was around 0, which happened around 280km. At that point, I aimed the rocket directly horizontal in the direction i was going, and blasted the engine until I got up to around 2 km/s, and cut it (ended up around 2030m/s) (That chart that Dark567 posted is really useful.)

I still had about 2/3 of a tank of fuel left too. I had just waited for quite a while to do an orbit around the planet and record my apogee and perigee. Once I had done that, I fired the rest of my rocket opposite my direction of motion, and when it was dry, I jettisoned it with the fuel tanks. It was enough to slow me down, that I was able to drop down into the atmosphere and slow down the rest of a way, and deploy my parachute to a nice slow landing, that for some reason resulted in me exploding. Maybe landing in the middle of the ocean with no land in sight had something to do with that. Or the 13.9G I had for a short while during my not-so-gentle re-entry.

And yeah, this game definitely needs a way to speed up time, all of that took about 70 minutes.

Edit: Hmm, seems the solid boosters don't particularly add a lot to that, I just took all of them off, and got into what should be a roughly circular orbit at around 125km with a bit over half a fuel tank left, and was then able to de-orbit and land safely. Testing with just the solid rockets on, gets me to 2500m, with a speed of 100m/s, so it does add some, and has quite a bit of thrust, but not much compared to what the liquid rockets can do for delta-V. Hmm, although with some testing, it is useful to getting a fuel-tank rich rocket off the ground.

And yeah, listing a mass for everything would be nice, how much an engine weighs, how much a fuel tank weighs, empty and full, etc. Would help to determine if it's better to just stack a bunch of fuel tanks, or use stages, with extra engines, so you can drop empty tanks.

SlyReaper wrote:Heh, I didn't even notice that fuel tanks only work with liquid rockets. They're just unnecessary weight as they are. Might as well plonk some more solid boosters there as an intermediate stage after the first solid boosters have been jettisoned.

Speaking of weight, I can't see anywhere in component descriptions how heavy the different components are. It seems like that would be a fairly important thing to know when building a rocket. I've had setups where I press launch, and the rocket just sits there because the engines aren't powerful enough to even lift it.

Also, does anyone bother with that SAS module? I've been fitting one, but I don't use it that much. Would I save much weight if I took it off?

I've found that slapping multiple SAS modules throughout the ship and hitting T before I even lift off means I pretty much just go straight up and don't have to dick around with minor (or major) readjustments mid flight.

But I only started tinkering with it last night, so.. I dunno.

heuristically_alone wrote:I want to write a DnD campaign and play it by myself and DM it myself.

heuristically_alone wrote:I have been informed that this is called writing a book.

Solid boosters can be jettisoned as soon as they outlast their usefulness, so they're basically free lift in terms of weight. You might as well have as many as is stable (which is usually not very many). They're too inefficient to use for anything but lift-off.

I used the sunday punch mod to make an escape velocity craft that's well over twice as efficient as my last. It's pretty simple but this is what it looks like:

Notice no solid boosters, this is a pure liquid rocket and fuel thing. I could attach some, but I think it just looks better without them. This baby is capable of achieving orbit, with enough Δv to de-orbit and land again. I like it, and if I did stick some solid boosters on the bottom there, it would go even higher.

SlyReaper wrote:Notice no solid boosters, this is a pure liquid rocket and fuel thing. I could attach some, but I think it just looks better without them. This baby is capable of achieving orbit, with enough Δv to de-orbit and land again. I like it, and if I did stick some solid boosters on the bottom there, it would go even higher.

I am somewhat surprised you were able to have lift off with that many fuel tanks with no solid boosters. Could swear I needed to strap some on to get it off the ground.

I apologize, 90% of the time I write on the Fora I am intoxicated.

Yakk wrote:The question the thought experiment I posted is aimed at answering: When falling in a black hole, do you see the entire universe's future history train-car into your ass, or not?

490km and climbing using SlyReaper's rocket. It's climbing around 1km every two seconds, and it's been doing so purely on inertia since about 350km with a forward speed of 1100 m/s. Nice design, way simpler than what I'd been playing with.

"There's spray paint on the teleprompterAnchorman screams that he's seen a monster (mayday)There's blood stains on his shirt (mayday)They say that he's gone berserk."--Flobots "Mayday"